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Wednesday, March 18, 2009

The Stewart and Cramer Show

It is always interesting when the left eats one if its own.

Last week attack-dog commedian Jon Stewart went after Mad Money man Jim Cramer.

Mad Money is a really obnoxious show where a really loud person makes funny noises while panning or praising stocks. There is often a spat of day trading activity when he mentions a stock's name.

Cramer is a former hedgefund wank who encourages the day traders who follow his show to take heavy short positions.

I think it is worth examining the prominent progressive investors in the market. Many of these folks are drawn to hedge funds and strange derivative schemes. Madoff, Soros, and Cramer all are into the hedgefund and moneymaker concepts.

Short sells, derivatives and credit default swaps are not investments. They are side bets on the market.

When the derivative market gets too large, there appears to be a strange tail wagging the dog effect.

I've noticed that both progressive professors and progressive investors are prone to describe market activity in terms of ecosystems, with the progressive investor trying to set himself up as the predator that culls the herd.

There are numerous rogues on the right. The ones on the left, however, are intersting as they seem to better reflect what is taught in our progressive universities. For example, Blythe Masters (who is often credited as the originator of credit default swaps) simply took ideas about the market straight from the classroom and into the boardroom.

I believe that the market is a creation of the human mind. What we learn in school and from the media affects how we engage in the market.

Jim Cramer feeds a day trading mantality adverse to long term investment and that seeks advantage in insider knowledge and desirous to engage in manipulation schemes. This highly influential person reflects thoughts on the market and consequently has profound on how the market behaves.

Different people learned to think in different ways.

According to his Wikipedia page, Warren Buffet learned his value investing technique that built his fortune from professors at Columbia University.

Buffet studied in a day when the University was dominated by classical liberal thought. The modern liberal approach seems to be producing people which much more destructive and unstable investing habits.

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